Ryan Smith

So I just got home from doing a bit of coding at my favorite coffee shop. I probably have 25-30 application windows open right now and as soon as I plug into my external display I will have to readjust all 30 windows. The problem is that when I am just using my MacBook Pro I like to have all of my app’s windows on that display… obviously! But when I come home and plug into my external display I no longer want my windows open in the MacBook Pro’s 15″ display, I want them open on my 24″ display. So for the past year I have manually dragged each application over to my large display. I estimate that I have wasted 4-5 hours in the past couple of months. I will not do the machines work any longer! Enter this script and you will add hours to your life!! I am really surprised that Apple has not addressed this issue.

 
tell application "System Preferences"
	set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.displays"
	reveal (first anchor of current pane whose name is "displaysArrangementTab")
	tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
		set frontmost to true
		click checkbox "Mirror displays" of group 1 of tab group 1 of front window
	end tell
	set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.displays"
	reveal (first anchor of current pane whose name is "displaysArrangementTab")
	tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
		set frontmost to true
		click checkbox "Mirror displays" of group 1 of tab group 1 of front window
	end tell
end tell
quit

Webrat is a nice driver for your integration testing. I have been using it in place of my controller and view specs. Factory Girl is what you should replace your fixtures with. So . . . . When you are using factories in your webrat integration tests, it is sometimes helpful to do things like this:

Given a customer exists with an id of "12345"

and that translates into a step like this:

Factory.factories.each do |name, factory|
  Given /^an? #{name} exists with an? (.*) of "([^"]*)"$/ do |attr, value|
    Factory(name, attr.gsub(' ', '_') => value)
  end
end

And all of this default behaviour is what you get when you install cucumber and factory girl. But today i ran into a little issue. One of my features needed to use the object that was created by Factory Girl in another step, so i caught the factory object with this addition

Factory.factories.each do |name, factory|
  Given /^an? #{name} exists with an? (.*) of "([^"]*)"$/ do |attr, value|
     ######
    @object = Factory(name, attr.gsub(' ', '_') => value)
  end
end

Now i can use @object in my other steps!

That is all.

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good coffee makes a good programmer

TreadEx
Investor’s Presentation!
blog post on KCStartup page

I had such a fun time! I came up with an idea to connect bicycle messengers with local business owners on Thursday night. I pitched the idea friday night at the Kansas City Startup Weekend ( with a little help from my friends ) and started from scratch on Saturday morning. Sunday night, we presented the idea and launched our site. It was awesome! Here are some highlights:

TreadEx Sunday Afternoon Update from Dan Melton on Vimeo.

TredEx Team Update from Dan Melton on Vimeo.

Help the Bikers Team from Dan Melton on Vimeo.

Read more here -> www.unews.com

Not only is `has_many` an excellent way to set up foreign keys ( Person has_many :fingers where fingers represents an Active Record class Finger) but has_many can also define custom relationships. Behold,

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :listings
  has_many :users, :through => :listings
  has_many :active_listings, :class_name => "Listing", :conditions => { :market_status => 1 }
end

.

This way whenever I want to grab all of the active listings that a book has, i can do this:

  @book.active_listings.count

That is all.

So on Tuesday of last week I revived an old idea.  I  wanted to create a web app that helps college students trade their textbooks.

Let me explain this idea with an example.

As a student. I want to save as much money as possible. I can do this by not buying my books from the university bookstore. But if I do not buy my books from the bookstore, how then shall i get the required reading material? My solution is to BookUp! So, lets say that I just finished Calculus III and I no longer need my 50lb Calculus book. I go to BookUp, find my Calculus book on the list and then I will create a listing associated with the book. This listing will show the world that I no longer need this book and I wish to give it to a student who does. I could sell it for cash or cashews, it does not matter because BookUp does not assume that much. BookUp is more of a tool to connect students and less of an commerce app. So basically this is a Craig’s List for college textbooks.

Let me know what you internet people think about this idea. . . . And now, in case you missed the link

BookUp

I like the new Safari a whole lot. Unfortunately there is no easy way to force Safari to open links in a new Tab. However, with this simple terminal command, the aforementioned annoyance can be laid to rest.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Restart Safari and voila!

Your controller is so fat I took a screenshot of it last Christmas and it is still printing. We have all heard stories about how we should keep our controllers slim and fit but there can never be a definitive answer on how to accomplish the athletic pose. For you see, there are an infinite amount of ways that your controller can take on husk. In this blog-post I will attempt to define and solve one of these problems.

Let us suppose that you have a User model and a Job model.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :jobs
end
 
class Job < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
end

Ok, so this proverbial Job is a very complex model. It has many attributes that are activated by complex algorithms. The job’s algorithms are influenced by input from the user.

class Job < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
 
  def algorithm!( input )
    case input
    when :variation_one
      # do a bunch of crap
    when :variation_two
      # do even more crap
    end# case
  end# algorithm
 
end# Job

Now that we have this model with extremely complicated algorithms that depends on loads of user input; we need to find a RESTful way to call these methods. Please keep in mind that these methods require the users input which will come from the params hash. Since our app is RESTful, we will be ‘updating’ the object by sending a PUT request with data that will be received by the Jobs controller.

Our edit.html.erb should have something like this in it:

 
<%= f.check_box :important_input_that_is_not_apart_of_the_model %>

This data’s purpose is to instruct the algorithm on how to execute. However, it is not apart of the model. There is NO column that corresponds to this data. So the question now becomes: How do i get this data from the view/controller (params hash) to the model?

The way I attack this problem is by adding this to my model:

 
class Job < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  attr_accessor :important_input_that_is_not_apart_of_the_model
 
  def before_save
    self.algoritm!( self. important_input_that_is_not_apart_of_the_model )
  end
 
  def algorithm!( input )
 
    case input
    when :variation_one
      # do a bunch of crap
    when :variation_two
      # do even more crap
    end
  end# algorithm
end# Job

In this case we have added NO extra code to our update method in the Jobs controller. However we have added heaps of functionality.
Let me know if there is better way to do this ?

I like uniform key commands. Hence the following quick tip.  Now i can move between tabs in TextMate with ease.

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts.

Now, add a new short cut and name it “Next File Tab” and then add whichever keyboard shortcut you prefer. Do likewise for “Previous File Tab.” Voila!